Posts Tagged ‘tomasky

If this South China Morning Post story is right, Edward Snowden isn’t admirable in the least and is nothing more than a spy:

Edward Snowden secured a job with a US government contractor for one reason alone – to obtain evidence on Washington’s cyberspying networks….

That’s a spy. Period……

A jerk. But more importantly, a run-of-the-mill lawbreaker. The “whistleblower” case was always a little bit dodgy. Whistleblowers expose criminal acts. He just didn’t like his country’s policy. That’s fine. Millions agree with him. But we can’t live in a world where citizens are allowed to do what he’s done without repercussion.

8:0: Participates in a photo opportunity with President Xi Jinping of China, at The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, Rancho Mirage, California.

8:05: Holds a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping

11:0: Holds a working dinner with President Xi Jinping

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Steve Benen: … The U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs in May, slightly better than expected, though the overall unemployment rate inched higher to 7.6%. As is usually the case, there was a gap between the two major sectors – America’s private sector added 178,000 jobs last month, while spending cuts caused the public sector lose 3,000 jobs.

One key figure to keep in mind, however, was local-government hiring, where 13,000 jobs were created. We’ve grown accustomed to municipalities doing the opposite, and if this holds up (and continues), it will strengthen the overall job market…

PS Loved this: “Do you folks remember the last time Steve Benen took a day off? Yeah, we had to go back and look, too. I’m happy to report that Steve is taking vacation today and tomorrow, Thursday and Friday.”

But…. “Steve says he’ll be escaping vacation at least long enough to post the new unemployment report – and his famous bikini graph – on Friday morning.”

Yes, he took a break from his two day vacation to post on the jobs’ figures. He’s a hoot.

Must-read – although, Tomasky makes the mistake of suggesting the deranged hate only comes from the right:

Michael Tomasky: Nothing will stop Republicans from trying to turn the IRS scandal into Watergate. They simply despise Obama too much to settle for anything less ….. That’s all this is really about — their base’s rage at the continued existence of Barack Obama, and their own twisted craving to acknowledge and stoke it.

…. all that is to say nothing of the racist invective that is the constant background music of this presidency …. We in the media never discuss this, but it is a daily diet in this country — yes, daily — and nothing said about any president in history that I can think of comes close to matching its relentless and savage sickness.

…. The liberal base hated George Bush all right, but the hate wasn’t quite as existential, wasn’t quite as drenched in the same kind of suppurated derangement one finds in quarters of the right.

Besides which, Bush discredited himself through his uniform incompetence. Obama, clearly competent, has not done that and is unlikely to do it. So the Republicans have to do it to him. Tarnishing Obama is the only way they can emerge from these eight years not completely humiliated by him, so we’re just going to have to endure it.

Brian Beutler: The least surprising news of the week is that getting dressed down at the White House correspondents dinner did nothing to persuade Maureen Dowd and other opinion makers that their fantastical depictions of presidential power are actually puerile and lazy. Less than a month after Republicans rejected Obama’s budget — Chained CPI and all — gauzy platitudes about leadership are back in vogue.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Jake Sherman reports that the very people Obama’s supposed to “lead” to a budget deal (or a deal on anything) are perhaps more dysfunctional and reactionary than at any point since they came to power.

TPM: President Obama is set to nominate Penny Pritzker as his administration’s next commerce secretary and Michael Froman as U.S. trade representative, according to a White House official. Obama is scheduled to announce the nominations at 10 a.m. ET Thursday at the White House before leaving for Mexico.

Michael Tomasky: I don’t mind being called an Obamabot. I mean, I’ve written a few columns about the guy that were brutal, toughing than anything Dowd’s written, especially at the time of the debt ceiling fiasco. But I understand the game, and it doesn’t bother me.

I have something I wish to make crystal clear, however. If it seems to you (I mean you, pumpkinface!) that I’m always excusing Obama, you’re misreading me. I am instead seeking to cast blame where it properly belongs. And that is almost always the Republican Party. I’ve said all this a jillion times before, but it is simply not a mainstream political party in the traditional American sense. It is a radical oppositionalist faction, way beyond the normal American parameters both in terms of ideology and tactics. And that needs to be pointed out, unfortunately, again and again and again.

The news that Obama has nominated Congressman Mel Watt to head the Federal Housing Finance Administration, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is potentially a huge deal, with possible long term consequences for untold numbers of struggling homeowners — and, by extension, the health of the economy. There are two key questions to be asked about Watt, who would replace the Bush-appointed Ed DeMarco, who has been widely pilloried by liberals for refusing administration requests to allow Fannie and Freddie to offer debt relief to distressed home borrowers.

Charles Pierce: Noted sprawler-across-staircases Maureen Dowd has fashioned herself another Chronic Ward of a newspaper column today on her now-regular theme of what a wimpety-wimp-wimp Barry Obama is, and why she never should have let him take her to prom instead of the hunky Andrew Shepherd from The American President who, while admittedly fictional, never would take this guff from actual human beings like John Boehner and Eric Cantor …

…. Dowd once again seems to be writing from an assisted-living facility on the far side of a world Beyond The Planet Of The Ultra-Vixens.

…. It is the president’s job to get Congress to behave? Where in Article I does that part of the job description appear? It is the job of the voters not to elect morons. It is the job of the non-morons in the congressional leadership to keep the morons from driving the entire train over a cliff. When those two checks fail, as they obviously have, it still is not the job of the president to be the country’s chief moron-wrangler. I think we are heading into the endless thicket of Dowdian Daddy Issues here again…..